Monday, November 21, 2011

AVWW Beta 0.542, "Centurion AI," Released!

This one has been really quite a long time coming, hasn't it? Unusually so, for us. Well, it's packed to the gills with internal enhancements to both the enemy AI and multiplayer.

We're really getting close to being able to start our first opt-in multiplayer public alpha testing, which is very exciting for us. That's a major milestone for the game in general, and also it means that Keith will be able to do something else with his time other than toiling silently behind the scenes on the multiplayer code! Not that it hasn't been fun... but, no, actually I think Keith is too polite to say it but it hasn't been any fun. Fortunately, for players it should be quite a bit of fun!

The other big thing in this new version is a huge new AI behavior system, which is way more flexible and allows us to make enemies behave in much more interesting and complex ways. A number of enemies take advantage of this at higher levels, and there are two new enemies which make particular use of the new features. Many of the existing enemies are intentionally simplistic in their AI, since they are for the earlier parts of the game, but most new enemies will be using the more advanced AI options.

There's also new music in this release, a goodly number of new room map templates, some minor bugfixes, and a couple of minor balance tweaks. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the
in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you
launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found
if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.